Flight 370: Pilots, crew probed

A police car exits the compound of the home of pilot
Zaharie Ahmad Shah, the captain of Malaysia Airlines flight
MH370, in Shah Alam, near Kuala Lumpur. REUTERS/Samsul Said

Police are combing through the personal, political and
religious backgrounds of pilots and crew of a missing Malaysian
jetliner, a senior officer said today, trying to work out why
someone aboard flew the plane hundreds of miles off course.

No trace of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER has been
found since it vanished on March 8 with 239 people on board,
but investigators believe it was diverted by someone who knew
how to switch off its communications and tracking systems.

"We are not ruling out any sort of motivation at the moment,"
a senior police official with knowledge of the investigation
told Reuters.

Satellite data revealed by Malaysia's prime minister on
Saturday suggests the plane could be anywhere in either of
two arcs: one stretching from northern Thailand to the border
of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, or a southern arc heading
from Indonesia to the vast southern Indian Ocean.

A source familiar with official U.S. assessments said it was
thought most likely the plane had headed south into the
Indian Ocean, where it would presumably have run out of fuel
and crashed. Air space to the north is much busier, and the
plane would likely have been detected.

As authorities desperately try to re-focus the multinational
search, India said it was suspending operations around island
chains northwest of the Malay Peninsula, at the request of
Malaysian officials.

Indian defence officials said Malaysia wanted to reassess
priorities. Malaysian officials coordinating the search could
not be reached for comment.

The disappearance of Flight MH370 has baffled investigators,
aviation experts and internet sleuths since the plane
vanished from civilian air traffic control screens off
Malaysia's east coast less than an hour after taking off from
Kuala Lumpur en route to Beijing.

For relatives of those missing, the wait for any firm news
has been agonising.

At a news conference on Saturday, Prime Minister Najib Razak
said investigators believed somebody cut off the plane's
communications reporting system, switched off its transponder
and steered it west, far from its scheduled route.

Electronic signals it continued to exchange periodically with
satellites suggest it could have continued flying for nearly
seven hours after being last spotted by Malaysian military
radar off the country's northwest coast.

DELIBERATELY DIVERTED

Najib said that in light of the mounting evidence that the
plane was deliberately diverted, the investigation into the
aircraft's crew and passengers would be stepped up.

Within hours, special branch officers had searched the homes
of the captain, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, and first
officer, 27-year-old Fariq Abdul Hamid, in middle class
suburbs of Kuala Lumpur close to the international airport.

An experienced pilot, Zaharie, has been described by current
and former co-workers as a flying enthusiast who spent his
off days operating a life-sized flight simulator he had set
up at home.

"With Zaharie, the flight simulator games were looked at
closely," the senior police official said, adding that they
appeared to be normal programmes that allow players to
practice flying and landing in different conditions.

Postings on his Facebook page suggest the pilot was a
politically active opponent of the coalition that has ruled
Malaysia for the 57 years since independence.

A day before the plane vanished, opposition leader Anwar
Ibrahim was convicted of sodomy and sentenced to five years
in prison, in a ruling his supporters and international human
rights groups say was politically influenced.

Asked if Zaharie's background as an opposition supporter was
being examined, the senior police officer would say only: "We
need to cover all our bases."

Malaysia Airlines has said it did not believe Zaharie would
have sabotaged the plane, and colleagues were incredulous.

"Please, let them find the aircraft first. Zaharie is not
suicidal, not a political fanatic as some foreign media are
saying," a Malaysia Airlines pilot who is close to Zaharie
told Reuters. "Is it wrong for anyone to have an opinion
about politics?"

Co-pilot Fariq was religious and serious about his career,
family and friends said, countering news reports suggesting
he was a cockpit Romeo who was reckless on the job.

DAUNTING TASK

Malaysia said the latest analysis of satellite data showed
the last signal from the missing plane at 8:11 a.m. local
time, almost seven hours after it turned back over the Gulf
of Thailand and re-crossed the Malay peninsula.

The data did not show whether the plane was still flying or
pinpoint its location at that time, presenting searchers with
a daunting task. Seven hours' more flying time would likely
have taken it to the limit of its fuel load.

Experts from the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority and National
Transportation Safety Board have been working with Malaysian
authorities to analyse the data from geostationary satellites
operated by Britain's Inmarsat.

India had been searching in two areas, one around the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands and a second further west in the Bay of
Bengal, both in the direction the plane was heading when it
dropped off Malaysia's military radar at 2:15 a.m. local
time.

Both searches have been suspended, but may resume, defence
officials said on Sunday.

The Indian Ocean is one of the most remote places in the
world and also one of the deepest, posing potentially
enormous challenges for efforts to find wreckage or the
flight voice and data recorders that are the key to solving
the puzzle.